This means that you should be armed at all times this holiday season. Of course you should always be armed at all times.

I'm sure our fearless leaders would have a different suggestion for you. Something along the lines of "we should have the TSA set up security checkpoints everwhere and if you aren't happy about it then you must be a terrorist".

If being armed isn't a good thing then the police should quit carrying firearms and government officials should give up their bodyguards. I don't expect that will happen.

Stay armed. Stay vigilant. Have fun. Enjoy the holidays with the knowledge that you can help take care of your family and yourself if you have to.

The Brazilian delegate stressed, however, that this should not be seen as a call for a "takeover" of the internet.

I'll interpret that for you: We know we can't take over total control all at once so we'll take whatever we can get away with now and come back for more later. The standard method of nickle and diming people to death. The same method is used to attack all liberties.

Friday, December 17, 2010

The short form is that government at all levels is going bankrupt the batboys want to increase the amount of paperwork that they have available to process. They are planning on doing that by requiring dealers to send a from to the batf any time someone buys more than one semi-auto rifle with a detachable magazine and a caliber greater than .22 at a time.

There is no apparent reason for this except that all the extra forms coming in will of course require a larger budget to hire more people to read and file the forms.

Nothing like overspending your budget to justify a budget increase. Doubly so when the project you are overspending on is senseless. Triply so when the people most likely to be targeted by your silly project are also the people most likely to oppose your budget increase and to oppose the direction the federal government is headed in general.

When we visit my parents the kids like to make something in Grandpa's shop. It's sort of a ritual.

This year I think #3 started it by saying he wanted to build a "sniper rifle". We asked what each kiddo wanted. #1 wanted to make a plasma pistol from Halo. #2 wanted to make a Sten. #3 wanted to make a sniper rifle. #4 wanted to make a treasure chest.

First, the plasma pistol.

In case you don't know what a plasma pistol from Halo looks like, here is a pic of one you can buy for $199.Granted, the one that Grandpa and I made with #1 doesn't have all the neat colors and sound effects, but I think I like the wooden version better.

Here is the Sten.Here are some pics of real Sten guns.A little bit of black and gray spray paint added to that would get you arrested in most big cities. The receiver started out as a rolling pin. We still aren't quite finished yet. We still need to add sights.

**Side note: I really need to get that couch recovered. It's been through 11 years of kids and that's the biggest issue with it so I guess it's not too bad.**

The sniper rifle proved to be a little more involved. My dad ended up finishing it himself. The results were worth the effort.The barrel was an old shovel handle. The scope started out as a rectangular block of wood and the hole goes all the way through.

I'm waiting for my better half to send me pics of the treasure chest. It is made from a bunch of cabinet doors that were taken out of my parent's kitchen when they had it remodeled. It is just the right size for a little girl to put her treasure in and carry it around. I'll update this with the pics when I get them.

While we were working on these my dad commented that when he was a kid parents didn't take the time to make stuff like this for kids. I think that was the difference in the standard of living in those days vs. the standard of living in more recent times, plus there has been a big change in priorities. Heck, if you already own the tools, have a huge bin of scrap wood, and are retired so that time isn't such a rare commodity then creating toys like these makes sense. You can't buy the love of children and of woodworking that went into these.

Of course back in those days parents did other things with their kids. My dad told me that he and his dad went to stay at the farm one weekend. He crawled into bed to sleep and a few minutes later his dad got him up by throwing a lit firecracker next to him. They went outside and had a firecracker fight. Those were the days.

I try to keep some of that alive for my kids. Taking them out hunting and shooting is one of those things that parents don't do enough with their kids in my opinion. Building or making stuff with them is another. I do what I can.

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Mule deer season opened last weekend and we went out to see what we could find. We got to the blind about 1:30 Sunday and settled in.

Right away I saw a mule deer about 150 yards away in some fairly heavy brush. There are lots of elm trees in the area with limbs all the way to the ground and even if the trees are scattered 5 to 10 yards apart the lower limbs make a screen that is difficult to see through at a distance. I couldn't tell for sure if it was a spike buck or a doe because of the limbs in front of and behind the deer.

#3 sat still and quiet. My dad and I are both jealous of his ability to sit quietly. Youth has extra energy but it also has the ability to sit without getting cramps or pains.

About 4:00pm he finally started to get tired of waiting. He asked "When are we going back to Grandma's house?"

I told him that it was just getting to the time that the deer would really be moving and in any case we should stay until the end of legal shooting time. I also told him that if he didn't want to get a deer then I would use his rifle and take one if it showed up. He decided to stick it out.

A bunch of turkeys showed up and wondered all over the place making all kinds of noise. We somehow managed to convince #3 to not shoot one of them and to wait for a deer.

Reward time for #3 came about 4:30pm. A mule deer doe came up through a cut in the trees that a neighbor made with his bulldozer. About 20 yards behind the doe came a buck. He had a 1x2 rack but was fair sized. I got #3's rifle up and told him that they were close enough and he could shoot the buck when he had a shot that he liked. Mule deer season here is buck only unless you have a special managed land permit from the state, so taking does is not an option for us.

There was a little bit of a slope there and the doe kept getting in the way. The deer were also walking towards us while randomly changing directions to take a sample of this tree and that weed so the shot kept changing.

I was watching through binoculars so of course they seemed much closer than they were and with electronic ears on I could hear them tear leaves off the trees. I willed the buck to stand still and the doe to get out of the way.

Finally they both cooperated.

BOOM!!

At the shot the buck's front end collapsed. His back end tried to turn and run and then followed the front end to the ground.

The doe stood and looked at us trying to figure out what the noise was all about. She must have wondered about the sonic boom of the bullet going by her as well. I was beside the little shooter so my viewing angle wasn't exactly the same as his but the bullet must have gone right over her back to reach him.

Meanwhile the turkeys were looking at us, too. They would have stood there and let him shoot one if the senior members of our party didn't start clapping and yelling and slapping the youngest member on the back. By the time I realized what we had done it was too late. The birds realized that they might just be next and departed. They weren't in full panic mode but they were walking fairly fast and the nearest were 30+ yards away so we decided that shooting at them would be a waste of ammo.

The laser rangefinder showed the shot was 104 yards. Not bad.

Here is the view from the blind.Here is a pic of the young hunter.

Here he is with the meat. He is holding a turkey feather he picked up on the walk to the deer.You can see the classic mule deer monobrow in this pic.Here he is with his deer and the tool of his trade.This is his third deer so he is an old hand at this sort of thing.

The rifle was a Marlin 336 with an Simmons ProHunter 2x pistol scope mounted on an XS Scout Mount using Leupold QRW quick release rings. The rifle also has XS ghost ring sights. A cheek rest from Fulton Armory raises the comb high enough for him to see through the scope properly. The wide eye relief range of the scope means the stock doesn't have to be chopped off for him to use it and the only adjustment I have to make to use the same rifle setup is to push the cheekrest off to the side a little so I can get my face down far enough that my eye lines up with the scope. Butler Creek flipup scope covers keep the lenses clean when the rifle is being transported

The ammo was Remington Managed Recoil .30-30. It has a 125gr. CoreLokt bullet at a nominal 2175fps. Over the years I've read many times in hunting magazines about a bullet breaking both shoulders and being recovered from under the skin on the far side of some animal but I had never actually seen that in person until this hunt. A part of the core was just under the skin under the far side.

Here he is showing the point of impact.I had a little trouble with my scale and didn't get to weigh the buck on the hoof. I got the scale working later and the buck weighed 108 pounds field dressed.

On the way back to the truck I ran into the first mule deer we'd seen. He stuck his head out of the brush about 10 yards from me as I was walking by. Turns out it was a spike.

Here is a little wider shot. You can see the truck off to the right.Not a bad days work. On the way out we stopped and chatted with a neighbor for about 30 minutes. As we were driving up the road towards the house I saw something on top of a rise on our place between the house and the road. Sure enough it was four big mule deer bucks. I checked the time and it was 8 minutes after the end of legal shooting. We should have quit talking with the neighbor after 10 minutes and I might have had a shot.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

The most recent source I can find is Robert Heinlein's book Starship Troopers (don't bother with the silly hollywood movie, get the book), although I believe it is much older than that.

Of course in today's politically correct, equal opportunity, "non-gender-specific" world it would have to be changed to something like:

There are no dangerous men or women of any orientation or transgender status that can be imagined, including but not limited to those who prefer children, animals, or space aliens, as well as an infinite number that cannot be imagined and quite a few that it is best not to try and imagine, but there are an infinite number of dangerous objects that may cause someone somewhere to wet their pants in panic and could easily cause an otherwise innocent person to be misunderstood and to commit crimes and therefore their possession must be banned.

Monday, November 15, 2010

I was at the farm again last weekend. Still looking for that particular buck, or at least a nice one. With three little hunters filling the freezer I can afford to be choosy and if I don't get one at all then maybe one of the little ones I pass on will be bigger next year.

At any rate I was sitting and looking around with binos on Sunday morning. It was almost 9:00am and I was getting ready to pack it in in the next few minutes so I could get home. I hadn't looked around behind me in a few minutes so I glanced over my shoulder and was surprised to see this little one.

I've never seen one so little out so late. What were Mom and Dad thinking!?

This tyke was all alone. I wondered where Momma was. I took these pics over about a 5 minute period.

I'm not sure what the attraction was for the trailer hitch but the fawn kept going back and licking it. There was still a heavy frost on everything that hadn't been in the sun. If he'd been a few minutes earlier I might have gotten a pick of him with his tongue stuck.

Finally it went around the trailer to the water pan where Momma was getting a drink or something all that time.

Off they went.

I decided to just sit for a little while longer and see what else I could get a pic of. First up, another mule deer doe. She came by and put on a nice show for me.

Mule deer aren't the brightest creatures in the world. The bucks are not quite as trusting but aren't any brighter that I can tell. The biggest factor in getting a decent mule deer buck on smaller farms is having the buck wander across your place when you are there. Mule deer cover a lot more ground than whitetails and will hit any quarter section of land within their normal range maybe once every few weeks. If they cross your place during hunting season then great, if not, you're out of luck unless you are the kind of person that shoots them on someone else's property without permission. Even if you are that kind of person it is a felony so some people don't do it for that reason alone.

Before the doe had gotten very far I noticed some quail in the area. There has been a shortage of quail for the last few years. We saw one covey of about 10 or 12 on Saturday, then a group of 6. Could have been part of the same bunch. This bunch numbered 10 or 12 total but they wouldn't sit still long enough to count. You can see one on the dead limb at the base of the tree and 3 more spread out to the left. More of them had already started heading out.

Here is one I got a pic of as it walked under the blind.

I have videos of these as well and if I have time I'll try to upload them.